Mixed municipal waste: can AI recover more useful materials? News - 20 September 2026 AMP presented its AI-powered sorting approach at ESS Expo 2026. What does the company claim, and which real-world results will matter for mixed municipal waste? Mixed municipal waste is difficult to sort. Different materials arrive together, often wet or contaminated, so recovering them requires systems that can work with a less predictable stream than separately collected recyclables. That is the challenge behind AMP's Smart Sortation technology, presented at ESS Expo 2026 in Birmingham. In AMP's article on the event website, the company says its AI-powered system can identify recoverable materials in mixed municipal solid waste, including items affected by grime and moisture. AMP also describes compact designs that can fit into existing infrastructure. The company says its solutions typically deliver more than 60% diversion and more than 90% uptime. These are company-reported figures, not independently verified performance for every facility. Actual outcomes will depend on the incoming waste, plant configuration and viable markets for the recovered materials. Why does this matter? Better sorting could keep useful materials from being lost in the residual waste stream. It does not replace waste prevention, packaging reduction or effective separate collection. Rather, it may offer another way to improve what happens to the mixed waste that still reaches a processing plant. For local authorities and operators, the important question goes beyond whether an AI system can recognize an object on a conveyor belt. The real test is how much material a facility recovers, at what quality and cost, under everyday operating conditions. Comparable, site-level results will show where this approach delivers practical value. The cover image is AI-generated for illustration and does not depict an AMP facility.

Mining its garbage instead of its planet. Since riding my bike past the long-closed Pennsylvania and Fountain Avenue landfills on the Belt Parkway bike path as a kid in Brooklyn, I've been interested in waste management. Those mountains of garbage were impressive to a twelve-year-old boy. I used to wonder what was inside those growing mountains. A few weeks ago, I wrote about mining waste as a central element of a future sustainable circular economy. I observed then that: "The linear economy leads to dumping valuable inorganic and organic materials into a hole in the ground. Some of the waste stream is burned for energy, and even with advanced waste sorting, there will probably always be some materials whose highest economic value is to burn the material for energy, while using any residual material that remains in constructing buildings or roads. A half-century of waste sorting at the source has essentially failed. Some waste is recycled, but most is not. The policy of recycling waste is a failure... Recycling is a half-century-long failure. Like the related environmental "solution" of reducing consumption to save the environment, it just doesn't work. It relies on unrealistic assumptions about human behavior. We can change our patterns of consumption and can consume a less destructive mix of products and services, but people will not reduce consumption. No one wants to live alone with a candle in the dark to preserve the planet. We can create a circular economy, but not a less consumptive one. Human, home, and even business-based waste sorting doesn't work. A far better long-term solution is to rely on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics to sort a mixed stream of waste and mine the waste stream for raw materials." Recently, I also appeared in a video produced by the Wall Street Journal on New York City's approach to waste management, where I discussed the growing cost of waste management and the need to reconceptualize waste from an expense to a potential revenue stream. The Journal video attracted a fair amount of attention, and I recently had a video chat with John Kelsey, the Chief Commercial Officer of AMP, a waste sorting company that is rapidly developing the technology of advanced waste sorting utilizing robotics and Artificial Intelligence. The technology that I knew was being developed and would be widely available in the future turns out to already be in use. AMP builds and manages waste sorting facilities and is operating such a facility in Portsmouth, Virginia. There are about ten other companies competing with AMP, including the Canadian company Waste Robotics, as well as about twenty start-ups, some innovating with relatively untested technologies. As waste management technology develops, more of the raw materials in the waste stream will be capable of being recycled and sold to generate revenue. Organic waste is already being used for fertilizer and natural gas, and some of the waste materials now sorted can be used as construction materials. It is also possible to burn some of the waste stream and use it to generate electricity. Waste-to-energy plants are a well-established technology. In Japan, over 75% of the garbage is incinerated, and most of that is used to generate electricity. Land is too scarce in Japan for landfills, but in the long run, waste mining should be combined with waste-to-energy to ensure that valuable resources are recovered and not wasted. Impakter shouldn't burn all the garbage, but reuse whatever generates revenue. Perhaps more importantly in the short term is that all these waste technologies ensure that garbage is diverted from landfills. Landfills are not only sources of both air and groundwater pollution, but they are also increasingly expensive to use. As land becomes scarcer and more valuable, "tipping fees" are constantly increasing. The funds now spent to transport and dump waste hundreds and even thousands of miles away could be used to invest in the facilities needed to sort and recycle waste materials. While there are parts of the United States that still have plenty of inexpensive land for landfills, on the east and west coasts, those areas are fast disappearing. New York City closed its last landfill a quarter century ago. Today, we New Yorkers spend about half a billion dollars a year to "export" garbage. There is an element of environmental advocacy, sometimes reflected in environmental policy, that views pollution as an ethical problem caused by bad people. In this view, "good people" sort their waste, reduce consumption, and minimize their negative impact on the planet. In this view, environmental protection is a moral issue. This sometimes results in regulation that seeks to change behavior through compulsion. The problem with this approach is that people do not like to be told they cannot do something they want to do. There are limits to the impact of rules. Certainly, rules against stealing and killing are quite effective, but rules requiring households to sort their garbage are difficult to enforce and tend to be ignored. A careful analysis of successful efforts to reduce pollution finds that most of the progress Impakter has made in cleaning the environment comes from the same source that pollutes the environment: new technology. Advances in sewage treatment technologies have helped make its waterways cleaner. Stack scrubbers and switching from coal to oil, from oil to gas, and from fossil fuels to renewable energy have made its air cleaner. Regulation, subsidies, public education, and incentives have helped force the adoption of new technologies, but there are clear limits to the effectiveness of rules and targets. Rules on auto safety and fuel efficiency have had an impact because consumers are attracted to cars that are cheaper to run and do a better job of protecting their families. But efforts to ban SUVs and the internal combustion engine have failed, as have rules requiring recycling. Here is a list of articles selected by its Editorial Board that have gained significant interest from the public: The technology of waste processing and mining has the advantage of several cost curves that are bending in its direction. One of the major costs of sorting and reprocessing waste is the cost of energy. These technologies are energy intensive. However, as the cost of renewable energy and battery technologies continues to come down, that element of the cost equation will be reduced. The second trend is the growing cost of mining finite resources. These costs will continue to increase because most easily accessible minerals and other resources have already been mined, and the deeper you dig or drill, the more expensive extraction becomes. New technologies like fracking can help reverse these trends, but in the end, finite is finite, and when a resource is mined and used, it's gone. Unless the resource can be mined a second time from the waste stream. That doesn't work for fossil fuels that are burned, but it will work for fossil fuels that have been used to manufacture plastic. The issue with waste processing is often political, because no one wants a new waste facility located near their home. A siting strategy employed by AMP is to locate the waste sorting facility at existing waste transfer stations. The garbage is already being brought there, so the "not in my backyard" issues have already been addressed. In New York City, another possibility might be to build a new island in the middle of one of the city's many waterways to host a facility and barge the waste from the city's existing marine waste transfer stations. It may be that a single large waste processing plant would be more efficient than a group of smaller ones, but that would be a matter for study. Large facilities have the benefit of economies of scale, but smaller, decentralized plants might be easier to manage. The goal of the field of sustainability management is to reduce the impact of its economic life on the planet, while continuing to grow the world's economy. A city like New York has the density needed to produce the quantity of waste required to make investments in waste processing and mining cost-effective. Reusing waste is a prerequisite for a circular economy and for the development of a sustainable city and economy. Waste sorting technology is here and rapidly advancing. What is missing in New York City is the political will and vision needed to transform waste dumping to waste mining.

Latest recycling facility upgrades target safety, limited disposal capacity. Amp will help divert recyclables from MSW in Michigan, officials in Maryland celebrated key upgrades to a MRF's fiber lines, and baling improvements at a Virginia facility added efficiency. Published Aug. 12, 2026 MRF and recycling operators across the country are celebrating how major system investments and more targeted equipment upgrades are making recycling centers safer and more efficient. What MRF upgrades or updates are you following? Send Waste Dive a note at [email protected]. Amp and Kent County, Michigan, target WTE efficiency with new MSW sorting system. Kent County, Michigan, is updating how it manages its waste-to-energy and recycling processes by partnering with Amp on a new municipal solid waste processing system. The planned facility, co-located at the county-owned mass burn combustion facility, will separate bagged trash into streams of mixed recyclables, organics and residuals using computer vision and pneumatic sorting technology. The Amp One system is meant to remove recyclable materials from the waste stream and sort them into salable commodities, which Amp said will also improve throughput at the mass burn facility. The system is expected to process about 25 tons of MSW per hour. Amp says the system will enable the facility to process more MSW while preserving regional landfill capacity. "This will quickly become a best practice for the waste industry as we look to increase our efficiency; improve safety; increase recycling; and protect the air, land, and water in our community," said Dar Baas, director of Kent County's Department of Public Works, in a statement. Amp has already worked with Kent County on past recycling efforts, including on a project to install AI-powered sortation technology at the county's MRF. Amp was first known for its AI-powered robotics offerings, but the company has recently been expanding its MSW processing capabilities through its Amp One sorting system. Last year, it contracted with the Southeastern Public Service Authority in Virginia to process the region's waste, organics and recycling using a similar Amp One system, and the company has said it plans to deploy more of the systems across the country as a solution for extending landfill capacity issues and managing other recycling infrastructure constraints. "This project demonstrates how AI-powered automation can help municipalities unlock more value from the waste stream, extend landfill life, and complement waste-to-energy systems in a cost-effective and scalable way," Amp CEO Tim Stuart said in a statement. Fiber line upgrades are reducing downtime in Prince George's County, Maryland. Upgrades on the fiber line at the Prince George's County MRF in Maryland are reducing downtime and increasing bale quality, officials said last week. Recent upgrades to the county-owned MRF include new anti-wrap star screens, new cameras to view equipment operations and improvements to the tipping floor. During a county presentation on Aug. 4, officials touted the upgrades as having an immediate impact: Downtime has reduced by 8%, and they're already baling more aluminum and paper now that the screens aren't clogged by contamination like plastic bags. PG County's recycling program services about 180,000 households, and its MRF accepts more than 60,000 tons per year, officials said. The facility is open for tours to school groups, churches and the general public. Anthony Bennett, deputy director of the environment for PG County, said the tours are as important to the facility as the upgrades themselves. "If people don't know, they don't do. The more they know about the facility, the more they'll get involved" in better recycling habits, he said. PG County has one of the highest diversion rates in the state at around 65%, compared to a 20% to 40% average in other counties, said Tim Ford, managing director of environmental operations for the MRF's operator, Maryland Environmental Service. That also helps the county fetch some of the state's highest per-ton revenues for recyclables. The latest upgrades follow a series of other MRF investments the county made in 2021, when operators added optical sorters and other improvements, he said. Charlottesville recycling facility gets safety, efficiency upgrades. The Ivy Solid Waste & Recycling Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, has a new recycling and baling building meant to help make operations safer and more efficient. The new 16,800-square-foot facility is set up to receive and bale mixed paper, corrugated cardboard, plastic film, PET and HDPE, according to a news release from the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority. The new building has 11 loading docks for tractor-trailer staging, and the design provides at-grade loading for forklifts to more safely move finished bales for transport. Previously, recycling facility baling operations took place in an "undersized leased facility. Moving operations directly to the Ivy recycling center makes the workflow more efficient and adds capacity to recycle and bale more materials as demand for these services grows, the solid waste authority said.